On 23 September Labour Party conference passed a motion against the public sector pay freeze, which the Labour leaders have promised to continue, and for the Living Wage to be made law.

Speaking for the motion, Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public services union Unison, called for “a clear unambiguous Labour promise to turn a statutory minimum wage into a living wage”. He continued: “The pay freeze must end. No ifs, no buts — a clear commitment to end the Tory pay freeze”.

Firefighters in England and Wales take strike action on Wednesday 25 September in response to government attacks on firefighters’ pensions which would see them pay more, work longer and receive reduced benefits on retirement.

Unusually for a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Gilbert Achcar has become the hate figure for parts of the left over recent months for his perceived support for big-power intervention in Libya.

As austerity puts the squeeze on the most vulnerable, many more people are lurching into mental health crisis. At the same time, services are stretched to breaking point. The mentally unwell are having to fend for themselves. Todd Hamer looks at the issues.

Between 2002-3 and 2007-8 there was a 17% reduction in mental health inpatient beds from 32,753 to 26,928. A Panorama investigation found that there had been a further reduction of 17% since 2008. We have lost a third of inpatient capacity in just 10 years1.

­­In class struggle, politics must always take precedence over any specific organisational matters. This doesn’t mean a dogmatic commitment to the details of past or current programmes, but serious consideration of how revolutionaries can begin to forge a mass organisation.